


Find Me In the Air

by sunflowerwonder



Category: Homestuck
Genre: 12 Days of Christmas fic, According to discord it's a Night in the Woods AU, An on-brand millennial lack of life direction, Anyway this is a Christmas Fic, Chapter-A-Day, Christmas fic, Ex-Lover Hookups, Happy with this bittersweet undercurrent, Inopportune Nostalgia, M/M, Melancholy, Old Flames, Quirky Small Town Life, Referenced racism, Secret Relationships, Sexual Content, Small Town Return, Southern Gay Culture, That's kind of how nostalgia always is though, gay culture, in the same way Die Hard is a Christmas Movie tho, referenced homophobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-14
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-14 21:47:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13016826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowerwonder/pseuds/sunflowerwonder
Summary: A wolf returns to the farm that deposed him.





	1. A Partridge in a Pear Tree

**Author's Note:**

> I refuse to be run out of my home state.

 

**Thursday.**

  
  
The winds of northern Texas skidded uninhibited across the flat plains of the small, hollow town. Their gusts sunk deep through the canvas of Jake's weathered bomber jacket. He shivered beneath it. The climate was a bitterly dry chill and an outright antithesis to the warm shimmer of Costa Rica still pressed firm in his mind. Jake's ears were cold where the tips of his glasses hooked behind them and his breath fogged the phone he was attempting to turn on.   
  
The people of Skaia, Texas were nowhere to be seen around the desolate bus stop he'd shuffled off onto. His lack of cellphone charge was soon to change that, though, as he needed to arrange access to both a functional outlet and a place to stay. Confrontation with others was inevitable. His face was unused to being recognized, and he was unsure how it would react to familiarity.   
  
He prodded off from the bus station proper and ducked into the ticket registrar. A rather dull man sat on a stool behind plexiglass, playing digital solitaire and sipping from a coffee mug with a picture of his presumed family printed cheaply across it.   
  
Jake smiled at him and waited to be noticed. When he wasn't, he said, "Pardon me—I haven't been 'round this neck or torso of the woods in quite a while. Could you tell me if the motel on 5th and Main is still open for business?"   
  
The man turned and stared at him, unblinking and blank. Jake was unsure if the droop of his mouth was in judgement or disinterest.   
  
"My phone seems to have up and died on me," Jake offered as a meek attempt to explain further.   
  
"English," the man grunted, his chin dipping as he gave a single, slow nod.   
  
"Er, yes," Jake said. "I'm back in town for a spell. Clearly."   
  
"You remember me?"   
  
Jake felt his mind race.   
  
"I was Haley's dad. Harry. Harry Thrice."   
  
"It's all a bit vague," Jake confessed.   
  
The man snorted, as if amused with this revelation. Beefy fingers reached for the corded off-white telephone next to the desktop. "Welcome back, boy. I'll give Shelley-Anne a call."

❧

Shelley-Anne was a known figure in their tiny rural township, but as a native resident Jake had never had much reason to interact with her. He had sat out front of the ice cream shop next to her motel, once, when he was a tot, eating an orange-cream popsicle and observing the foreign strangers trekking in and out of the establishment with passing fascination. But that was only on a brief visit to town while his Grandmother bought groceries, and Jake's thoughts had lied more with the stories behind the grizzled men come to hunt in the famous Skaian wilderness and less with the aging woman giving them their roomkeys.   
  
Shelley-Anne was a grandmotherly figure with silver hair pressed in a frayed bun behind her head. Her fingers tapped sharp against the yellowed keys of a rather ancient computer, asking only for his check-out date and not his name.   
  
"Oh, Jake. Charles would have loved to have seen the day you strolled back into this little ghost town," she said, patting him lightly on the cheek. Charles was her late husband who Jake was fairly sure died before Jake was even conceived.   
  
"Happy to be back," he smiled, shoving his key into his pocket a little too quickly.

❧

Room 01 was a shabby affair with a bedspread faded in a perfect square from where the afternoon light shown harsh through the window. Like all things in Skaia: simple and old.   
  
Jake was eager to shut the curtains and flop onto the comfort of his temporary bed. The mattress was dreadfully broken down but he sighed into it regardless.   
  
An hour in his hometown and already the itch to leave crawled up his spine and the backs of his wrists. It was insatiable. Insistent. "This isn't where I belong," he muttered to himself. "I should have let them just bulldoze the whole bloody house, extraneous trinkets and all."   
  
Yet bitterness fell to muted sighs drowned by the blurry static of the radio next to the bed, and Jake felt compelled to draw himself up from his misery if only to turn the damned thing all the way off.  He was left only with the murmur of the heater and the press of a headache to his temples. A popcorn ceiling weighed down above him. Skaia—to hell with it.   
  
A knock at his door signaled his attention to things beyond the psychological entrapment of a hometown visit. He righted himself, slipping off his travel-crumpled jacket to look a tad more presentable.   
  
A woman was leaning on his doorframe when he clicked open the motel door, fuchsia nails halfway into lighting up a cigarette. Her leather jacket hugged her frame tightly and her baggy pants hung low on her hips. Jake waited patiently for the rolled paper in her fingers to snag fire amidst the December wind. Only when it caught did his guest look up.   
  
"Ey, punk," she said, taking a drag. Meenah was confident and abrasive and downright intrusive with just a few words. "Heard your bass was back in town."   
  
"I've only been here an hour," Jake said.   
  
"I know, guppy."   
  
Jake leaned against the door until the corner of it bit into his collarbone. "Keeping up with the fish terms, I see."   
  
"I got an empire to uphold, chum," she said.   
  
"Still trying to get that ocean themed girls gang off the ground?"   
  
"We don't need no ground and we don't need no gang—we're an ocean _empire_."   
  
"And where is the other one of you?" Jake asked.   
  
Meenah scowled. She gritted her teeth at him. They were too yellow and too sharp. "Aranea's off at college."   
  
"Ah," Jake said. "Sorry."   
  
"Nah, she's a straight beach. I'm not treadin' water over it."   
  
"Right," Jake said.   
  
"She can go fuck herself on all those pretty rich buoy fishdicks."   
  
"Sure," Jake said.   
  
"Wants to be a 'politician' my bass—"   
  
"Is there something you wanted?"   
  
Jake was long past the days of waiting discomforted for Meenah to remove herself from her daily soapbox. Meenah merely rolled her eyes. Took another drag between curled lips.   
  
"I'm throwin' a bonfire down at the lake Saturday night," she said. "How long you in for?"   
  
"A week," Jake replied. "Maybe two. It depends on how quick I can sort through the house."   
  
"Good. You ain't there you still a square."   
  
"We'll see, won't we." Jake's voice was flat in his irritation. He rubbed beneath his glasses at bus-worn eyes and moved to close the door.   
  
"Wait."   
  
He looked back up.   
  
"Sorry 'bout your 'ma," Meenah said. It sounded genuine enough, if a bit like it was forced past her throat.   
  
"Thank you," he said.   
  
Meenah stared.   
  
"Is that all?" he said.   
  
"You'll wanna brace yourself when you go up to the house. Younger punks been up an' smoking up there. Who knows what ship they wrecked."   
  
"Oh," Jake said, flatly. "Thanks for the heads up."   
  
"I told 'em not to."   
  
"Thanks, Meenah."   
  
"I told 'em. Damn punk kids don't respect anyone nowadays. Not me, not you, not your 'ma."   
  
Jake hummed in passive agreement. "I figured as much. But thanks."   
  
He swung the door closed. Meenah shoved a foot forward to stop it with a thick doorstop of a boot. Jake jumped at the blunt action, startled, before he let out a huff and pulled back.   
  
"Yes?"   
  
"Strider still works down at Marley's," she said.   
  
Jake felt his fingers still on the doorhandle.   
  
"Alright," he said.   
  
"Just in case you want to get your dick wet while you're in town," she said. She grinned. "Meenah's still got ya' back, chum. Don't you forget it. 

Jake's shoulders slumped. His fingers flexed against the doorhandle again. The way Meenah enjoyed injecting herself into other people's lives was the exact antithesis to his current plans—plans that involved entering and removing himself from Skaia with the least amount of incident possible. 

"Thank you, Meenah," Jake replied.  "But right now I would really just prefer a nap."


	2. Turtle Doves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains some brief references to a homophobic setting.

 

**Friday.**

  
  
A harmless nap slipped into a partially-comatose haze set against the black-and-white buzz of Andy Griffith reruns Jake had turned on the hefty motel TV for the very purpose of keeping himself awake. They must have done a truly shit job, because when he finally managed to crank open his eyes it was the next morning.  
  
He was still dressed in his travel clothes. He hadn't even bothered to slip beneath the faded bedspread. Someone was knocking on the motel door.  
  
Again.  
  
He heaved himself up from the spring mattress and paced across the room. He ran a hand through his jet black hair, hoping to make the natural tufts look intentional. He straightened his glasses and opened the door.  
  
A woman stood before him dressed in a prominent slate gray 1980s pantsuit and bright red heels.  
  
"Jake English," she said.  
  
"Uh," Jake responded. "Yes."  
  
Her stare was blank and targetless. She held out her hand with such blind oomph it almost collided with Jake's stomach.  
  
Oh. Blind. She's blind.  
  
"Terezi Pyrope: wills, estates, and trusts," she grinned. "I took over your file from your late grandmother's late attorney."  
  
Jake gingerly took her hand.  
  
"Ah. Right. Sorry, meant to call you yesterday," he said.  
  
"No need. Word travels fast around here, as I'm sure you're well aware."  
  
"I suppose that explains why everyone seems to know my room number too—"  
  
She gave his hand a crushingly strong squeeze at the end of their brief handshake before dropping it and spinning on her heels.  
  
"Come along, Mr. English. There's daylight a-burning and you've got plenty of fancy documents to pretend to understand. Breakfast is on me."  
  
"Hang on," he said. "Wait just a darn second. I haven't even gotten dressed for the day yet!"  
  
She stopped and turned her head back towards him. Sniffed.  
  
"You smell like you've got three-day-old khakis on," she said.  
  
"Well," Jake started. " _Yes._ But I would rather like a shower before I jaunt off for the day, if that orchestrates alongside your clearly cutthroat schedule."  
  
She clicked her tongue at him. "We're already behind the ball, English Junior-Junior. But sure. How about lunch at 11?"  
  
"Noon," Jake said.  
  
"I'm still paying," she said. "I'm still pretty new to these parts, but I've been informed to treat you with an extra special dose of southern hospitality. Something-something about your kinfolk being low-budget royalty, correct?"  
  
Now that she mentioned it, her voice did sound distinctly unnative. Almost North-Eastern.  
  
"It's just me left," Jake said. "And my grandmother built one now-defunct factory in the 50s. Hardly royalty."  
  
"You wouldn't think that the way people are whispering on about you," she replied. She waved manicured fingernails at him. "But I like to make my own judgments. Noon, then? Say... The Leijon?"  
  
Jake nodded. Then, realizing his fault, opened his mouth: "That works for me."  
  
"Wonderful," she said. "Buh-bye, Junior-Junior."  
  
Jake waved goodbye but was out of earshot by the time he realized his efforts were again unnoted. The lawyer walked with confidence and speed unbecoming of someone with her affliction. In heels, nonetheless.  
  
For some reason, he thought of the time Jane tried to wear heels to their 9th grade Sadie Hawkin's and ended up with two skidded knees but a very determined couples' portrait beside him. He laughed to himself.  
  
He thought of the time he walked in on Roxy showing Dirk how to buckle up the strap on a pair of kitten heels, the both of them giggling as Dirk's fingers failed to grasp the tiny metal latch on the side of his ankle. He thought of the sudden flash of horror on Roxy's face. The cold wash of silence ghosting down all of them. The joke Dirk cracked to cover and the subsequent forced laughter from Jake’s throat to smooth things over.  
  
He frowned.  
  
Jake closed the door. He laid out fresh clothes and finally turned off the damned TV. In the bathroom he scrubbed himself with the minimal hot water his motel room provided and dressed quickly, the sun already high in the sky by the time he locked his door from the outside and strode off towards his planned lunch.

❧

The streets were as dead as they had been on his arrival. He considered it good luck to be able to stride in the brisk air without the dreaded risk of recognition, but a wave of sympathy for the town's decreasing population was impossible to ignore.

He’d hung up his jacket in the bathroom while he showered to help resolve some of travel creases, and he hunkered deeper into the warmed fabric as a sharp December breeze cut against his face. He took determined steps against it. The nearby forests were hotspots for hunters and trappers. The town itself, however, with its flat plains and desolate landscape, had little in the way of protection from the elements.

The Leijon was a small diner by his travel standards but the biggest place the town offered that wasn’t a hunter’s bar. It was a thankfully straight shot upwind from his motel, and he slipped inside of it with little hesitation and huffed warm breath against his hands.

“Mr. English,” called a voice from a far wall of the diner. Jake glanced up.

Terezi Pyrope was already settled into a red, split-leather booth set against the glass wall of the diner. Jake shuffled up to her immediately.

He squinted at her. “How did you…”

“You still smell like khakis,” she said, gesturing at the booth in front of her. The table was already scattered with a plate of half-eaten berry pancakes and a stack of mildly crumpled papers with sticky pink fingerprints scattered liberally across them. “You’re late. I ordered without you.”

“How can you even tell what time it is,” Jake huffed.

She pointed out the window beside her, where the light hit her sharp cheekbones at an angle. ”This wall faces west. The sun is at an angle or it wouldn’t be able to feel it. Past noon.”

Jake’s eyes followed her fingers but did not search for the telltale sun. Instead, they lingered on an Easter-blue building across the street.

“What’s more _important_ ,” Terezi said, picking up a small stack of papers with a sharp ruffle. “Is finalizing your grandmother’s estate before we even _attempt_ to get into property liquidation. Which should have been handled years ago, directly upon her death, but I digress...”

The building was a mechanic’s garage complimented with a garden, porch, and fraying window insulation. It was converted from an old house sometime in the 60s, but today the majority of the building’s front was taken up by two tall garage doors. They were painted a dull cream, each with long, thin rectangular glass windows embedded towards the top of them, propped open for ventilation.

“But from the sounds of things, by which I mean whatever I could scrape off of the local gossips, you wheeled out of here the minute you had her more direct financial assets transferred to your name, with little care for the finer details of her will.”

“I was…” There’s movement behind the strips of glass. The shuffle of feet beneath where the bottom of the left garage door was cracked for additional air. “Grieving.”

“Now, I don’t blame you, Junior-Junior. I wouldn’t want to hang around these parts either if I had a say in things. But we’ve at least got to get through the rest of her final wishes. Let the old broad really rest in peace, you with me?”

A flash of pale color beyond the window. Blond hair? Or a headlight test?

Fingers snapped in front of Jake’s face. “Junior,” Terezi said. “I can _hear_ you not paying attention to me. You got trouble for your non-existent car or something? No? Good. There’s nothing over at Marley’s for you.”

She shoved a stack of papers at him, the ones without the braille. Jake tugged his gaze away from the garage to look over them.

“This is…?”

“Her will. Homework assignment—you need to look over it. Give me a call when you’ve digested the majority and I can clear up any questions. Sound good?”

“...Yes,” Jake said. His thumb was pressed uncomfortably into a spot of spilled jam. “Quite.”

“Great. Good talk, good talk.”

A small teenage girl Jake didn’t recognize stepped out from within the kitchen then and skipped up to their table. She pulled out a pencil from behind her ear and a pad of paper from her flour-dusted apron pocket. There were anime buttons pressed to the edge of it.

“Hi!” she chimed. “Welcome. What can I get’cha?”

Terezi stood up and grabbed a bag from the booth beside her. She handed the waitress what looked like a crumpled collection of assorted bills, patting her on the shoulder.

“Thanks for the pancakes, Nepeta. Get the Englishman whatever he wants and put the rest in your cat surgery jar.”

“Oh!” Nepeta said. “Thank you, ma’am.”

Terezi was already stalking off again. Jake watched her stride away. “Got clients. Later, Junior!”

“Uh,” Jake said. Then, louder, “Bye! I guess!”

Jake turned back towards the waitress, who shot him a winning smile. He hesitated, looked back down at the papers and pancakes still scattered across and the table, and sighed.

“I don’t…” He stared, a bit dazed. “Do you still have that hunter’s breakfast special?”

Her face brightened. “You’ve been here before.”

“I. Yes. I want that. Thanks.”

She jot down his order. His eyes strayed back towards the blue building.

“Drink?”

“What?”

“What do you want to drink with that?”

“Oh,” he said. Thoughts buzzed in his mind. Warm breakfasts after past-curfew lakenights and mid-afternoon waffles after school. “Uh. Orange juice.”

“Awesome,” she said. “We’ll have that right out.”

Jake nodded reassuringly at her and settled his mind back on the will in his hands. It was a lot of paper, surely, but something about it felt heavier than necessary.

“Thank you—” he said. But when he looked up the waitress was already gone.

❧

It was cold again, this time with no recently steam-warmed jacket to shield him from the chill. Jake stood on the short driveway of the garage, shoulders squared with false confidence but mind far from considering paying a visit to the little office beyond the front door and asking if his good-old-friend, Dirk Strider, might be present and willing to chat. Jake had always considered himself a brave man, but some things in this world require such a ludicrous amount of balls they were out of reach to even the roomiest of boxers-wearers. No, it was enough for him to simply stand and watch the flicker of movement beyond dusty windows, to gaze longingly with bitter nostalgia and—

The left garage was shoved upwards with a screech of unoiled metal. A bike was shoved past the fresh gash of an exit. It skittered and rattled across the pavement until it stopped just a few feet from the tip of Jake’s hiking boot.

“Scram,” a blunt voice said. Jake jumped in his skin and began taking a few startled steps backwards.

“You said you’d help me!” A young boy, a teenager, was backing out of the garage. His voice was high-pitched and angry. “You said you’d look out for me! You said you had to! You said!”

“ _John._ ” Dirk Strider ducked under the mostly-open garage door and reached his hand beneath the edge, shoving it up all the way with a hefty press. “Three times. Three times in six months I’ve fixed that godforsaken bike. I’m starting to think you—”

Dirk glanced up, catching Jake’s eye, and went perfectly still.

“You…” he repeated. Dirk looked the same: The sharp line of his mouth. The broadness of his shoulders. The soft down of his white-blond hair streaked with grease and smooshed down by a pair of workman’s glasses propped up and over his forehead.

“Dirk,” Jake said. Then, in a mashed, vile-tasting vomit of words, “Dirk, I’m so sorry, I—”

The teenager, John, whipped his head towards Jake. His eyes narrowed. “Who the fuck are you?” he said.

“John,” Dirk stated, voice and slow and serious. His eyes did not leave Jake. “Go home to your dad.”

“Fuck you,” John said.

“John.”

“Fuck you!”

Dirk flashed his anger-hot attention back to the teenager, face a scowl. “Go on. Get.”

“But my _bike_ —”

“Nobody cares about your bike, you little punk,” Dirk spit. “You least of all, clearly. Now _get_. Your dad would skin me if he knew you were here.”

John looked back to Jake. “Who’s the guy?”

“No one important,” Dirk answered.

“Are you fucking him?”

“Keep your fucking voice down.”

" _Are you?"_

Dirk strode forward, shoving past John and roughly hauling the bike sprawled in front of Jake back on its tires. He wheeled it back towards the garage.

“You can come back in two weeks,” Dirk said, venom in each otherwise innocuous word.

“ _Two weeks._ ”

“Get your ass home now or I’ll make it three.”

John skipped aside as Dirk rolled past him. He stuck out his tongue as the older man passed, before returning his focus to Jake.

“So you’re Dallas,” he said, eyes an investigative squint.

“I’m.” Jake stumbled over a tongue that suddenly decided not work. “What?”

“Where he goes off to every weekend,” John continued. He rolled his hand, gesturing for Jake to keep up. “Dallas. Sometimes Houston, I think. If he gets the week off.”

“He’s not from Dallas,” Dirk called, harsh, his glove-covered hands shoving the bike against a wall in the garage. “He’s an old friend. Case closed. Now go the fuck home.”

John rolled his eyes and took slow, heavy steps backwards as Dirk returned to the driveway. “Guess I will,” he said. “Three miles. On foot.”

“If you think I’m giving you a ride after this you’ve got another hell coming to you.”

“Alright, alright,” John called. His steps picked up. “I’m going! I am! See? Happy?”

Dirk gave a quick gesture of his chin that seemed to echo the sentiment of _get the fuck out_ before fully, finally, turning back to Jake.

Jake waited until the boy was out of earshot.

It took longer than he was expecting. He held eye-contact with Dirk the entire time.

“Hi,” he said, finally, slightly breathless.

Dirk stared.

“Did you happen to hear—” Jake stopped himself. “I’m sorry, can we start this over?”

“Hi,” Dirk said. His head was tilted to the side, expression unsure. Jake tried not to squirm beneath the examination. He knew Dirk had every right to be on guard, to parse for intentions.

“Hello,” Jake greeted again.

“You’re—”

“Back. Yes.”

“Since when?”

“Yesterday. Honestly, I’m amazed you haven’t heard yet with all the chatter supposedly flying about—”

_“Why?”_

Jake blinked. Dirk’s face was confused, his eyes drifting to look at the bleak scenery before settling back upon Jake’s features.

“What do you mean, ‘why?’” Jake said. “This is my home.”

Dirk scoffed.

“It is!” Jake stated. “And I said I would come back, didn’t I?”

“For me.”

“What?”

“For me,” Dirk said. “You told me you’d come back for me.”

Jake paused. His heart raced in embarrassment at the memory. He’d thought he was being romantic, a teenager painting himself some sort of savior off to see the world, telling Dirk he’d find them a lovely little spot of paradise and come back to retrieve him. It wasn’t until he had gotten the first letter return-to-sender that he realized he was nothing but a foolish deserter who hadn’t even bothered to give his dearest friend a proper break-up.

“...Right,” he said. “I… I don’t know how to express how sorry I am.”

Dirk nodded at him. “It’s alright.”

“Is it?”

“It’s been five years, hasn’t it?”

Jake swallowed. “Six,” he said. “Barely. But six.”

“Six,” Dirk corrected. “In the past. Thank you for apologizing.”

He stepped back and reached up and hand to grip the garage door. It squealed angrily as the muscles beneath his tank top strained to get it moving downwards.

“That’s it?” Jake said. “That’s all?”

Dirk stopped long enough to look back at him. “Is there something else you wanted to say?”

Jake’s mind raced. He wished he would have prepared… Something. He didn’t know what. But it would have surely been a step up from the drivel slipping from his mouth.

“Do you still go out to Meenah’s bonfires?” he said. It was rushed, desperate.

Dirk laughed. The door was moving, now, slowly. He had to sink down beneath it to keep eye contact as it lowered. “No. Why?”

“Why not?” Jake asked.

“Because I’m not sixteen,” Dirk said. “And I don’t want to go out and drink spiked Tabs with sixteen year olds.”

“But you used to love them,” Jake continued. “We used to love them.”

“And?”

Dirk stopped. The door was almost halfway down.

“There’s one tomorrow,” Jake said. He swallowed. “Do you want to go?”

Dirk’s face was impassive as it stared outward from the garage. Beyond him, a car was set up on a sturdy platform and tools were scattered about. Jake had to remind himself that Dirk was at work. That conversations such as these should not take place in the driveway of one’s workplace.

“I’m waxing nostalgic,” Jake added.

The silence strained on long enough that Jake realized Dirk was, at the very least, considering the proposition.

“No,” Dirk said, finally. He moved to shove the garage fully closed.

“Please,” Jake said. “I’m only in town for a week, and—”

“I know all about the highway project,” Dirk called from beyond the closing gap between metal and ground. Jake could only see the red of his sneakers, the tear in the canvas on the left one stitched closed with thick cord. “Congratulations on finally being rid of this place.”

There was a final, metallic clang as the door collided with the concrete and then all was still. Jake stood alone on the ghosttown’s streets. Thankful and bitter for the isolation all at once.

He sighed. The papers he’d tucked in his jacket crinkled against his chest.

“So…” a voice said from his left. He looked over to see the teenager from before, John or something, he’d already forgotten. The boy was tucked within the porch of the mechanic’s shop. “Definitely not from Dallas. Noted.”

“You were spying on us?” Jake said, affronted.

John shrugged.

“Like there’s anything else to do around here,” he replied, before hopping over the railing and scampering out of sight.

 


	3. French Hens

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's technically before midnight, whoo!

 

**Saturday.**

 

The speaker inside Jake’s cellphone rang in a series of long, monotone notes until the landline he was attempting to contact turned over with a sharp click.

“Terezi Pyrope, attorney at law,” a voice crackled from the other end. Jake breathed a sigh of relief.

“Ms. Pyrope, hello—”

“If you’re calling me today, that means it’s Saturday!” Terezi’s voice dropped from cheery excitement to contempt. “Call back Monday, asshole. And I *can* call you an asshole. Because I’m the only estate lawyer in this entire goddamned country.”

Jake sighed and waited for the voicemail to beep. He was sitting at the tiny little writing desk in his room, forehead pressed to his palm as he looked over the papers scattered in front of him.

_Beep._

“Ms. Pyrope,” he started again. “This is Jake English? I was looking over the will you gave me and I had some questions about the section on formal requests upon the sale of entitled property… Wait, no. The deceased’s requirements upon monetary exchange for inherited assets, uh. I think? I don’t know. The part about what I have to do if I try to sell the property. That. Thanks. Call me back.”

He set the phone down with a huff. He didn’t bother to collect the few pieces of paper that caught the gust of his frustration and sailed off the edge of the makeshift worktable.

He rubbed at tired eyes and knocked his forehead against the table. Reached for his phone. Called back.

“I guess I just don’t understand,” he said into the recorded void beyond his phone receiver. “I have to give up fifty percent of profit from the sale? To the county? For ‘redevelopment’ costs? What does that even mean?” He sighed. “If you happen to be around today, can you call me back? I fully realize I’m an asshole, I just—”

He didn’t even know what else to say. He pulled the phone away from his mouth and ended the call again. His forehead found antique wood.

“This hellish place,” he said to absolutely no one.

Someone knocked on the door.

Jake pulled himself up from his pity-nest of paperwork to answer yet another visitor. He’d never been this popular when he actually lived in Skaia.

“Hi there, Jake,” Shelley-Anne said as the door opened up. “I knew you were hard at work in here so I thought I’d bring you some lunch.”

A smile was on her face and a tray was in her hands, and Jake had no choice but to accept the little plated sandwich and cup of cubed lime Jell-O presented to him. She patted him on the cheek again, his hands too full to pull away.

“You boys just grow up so fast,” she said, a bit wistfully. She reached into her housecoat and pulled out a small brown lunchbag closed with pink duct tape.

“Your little friend brought you this, too,” she said, placing the bag on the tray.

“Friend?” Jake asked. Genuinely confused.

“The, uh… “ She searched for the nicest word. “Well, she was a rather ‘tough’ looking Indian girl. She asked me to deliver this to you. Told me you might need it.”

Meenah, Jake reckoned. Most certainly.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Are you eating enough?” Shelley-Anne asked.

“Yes ma’am.”

“You look a little pekid,”

“I’m perfectly well, ma’am,” he said. “Thank you for this fine lunch.”

She clicked her tongue a few time but smiled, bright, again.

“Have a nice evening, Jake.”

Jake was thankful that she shut the door herself as she departed.

He immediately dropped the lunchtray on top of the will with a huff and snagged the hastily wrapped gift from the top of it. He didn’t bother with the tape. Instead he sat on his bedspread and ripped the paper from the bottom, watching the contents spill over his lap.

A note. A lighter. Rolling papers. A baggie full of weed. What appeared to be a Playgirl with a Playboy cover shoddily taped over it. A Playboy, sans cover.

He picked up the note.

 

_i told you i had yo back, buoy. skaia starter kit. on me._

_sea ya tonight,_

_\- meenah xoxo_

 

He stared down at it. He thought of this villain of a girl asking a kindly old woman to deliver illicit gifts for her.

Then, for the first time since he entered the Skaian county limits, he laughed.

❧

The first time Jake went to one of Meenah’s lakeside bonfires, he was fifteen. He had shuffled around the edges of the fanfare with a barely-sipped beer in hand until he figured enough time had passed for him to awkwardly excuse himself and bum a ride off someone’s older sibling.

Ten years later, he would have hoped for some improvement. A car to drive, at the very least.

Lake Derse was uncomfortably cold mid-december, which made huddling around the bonfire brushing shoulders a necessity. Luckily, Meenah had dragged over a few spare logs since Jake’s time as a young scamp in her party circle, and there was plenty of room for him to section one off for his own isolation. He sipped his beer in silence, watching the party unfold before him as the sun dipped low in the sky.

Across the flames, he watched two seniors makeout. They were one of a half-dozen couples doing the same. To his right, three more high schoolers were sharing a blunt with dazed actions and heightened laughter. To his left, Meenah was doing a lackluster job of plucking out a tune on a rather ancient looking guitar.

“Hey,” she said, not looking up from the strings. “Grab a marshmallow and shove it up your ass or something. You’re bringing down the whole vibe.”

“I am not,” he said back.

“Are too.”

“Am not!”

She gave up on the guitar, leaning it against her log.

“I wanna let you in on a secret,” she said. When he didn’t make a move forward, she scooted herself over to him. “I _said_ , I want to let you in on a secret, kid.”

“I’m a month older than you,” Jake huffed.

“Would you just lean the fuck over here?”

Jake dutifully tilted his head towards Meenah’s mouth. His eyes drifted back above the flames, but not to the carefree scatter of teens. Instead, they found the treeline beyond the kids. And the meadow. And the small semi-circle of cars planted in it. Meenah’s nose piercing was cold when it pressed to his ear.

“There’s no weed in those blunts,” she said. He attempted to look over at her in surprise but she reached over to grab his jaw and crane it back to where she could whisper in his ear.

“Don’t worry. The stuff I got you was legit. But everything else here? Catnip I scored off Leijon’s kid sister for five bucks.”

She giggled, her face dipping to press against Jake’s shoulder in her amusement. He cracked a smile, too.

“Dumb fucking kids,” she said. She took a hysteric breath. “Think I’m some kind of cool big sister. They paid me twenty bucks each just to *be* here.”

“Honestly, Meenah. You’d be a hell of a business woman,” Jake said, taking another sip of his drink, but Meenah only laughed louder.

“Honestly,” she parroted, but Jake’s eye was drawn away from her as a new flood of headlights washed over him from the makeshift parking lot.

“My point is, English, that if these dumbass kids can have more fun with a fist full of catnip and someone else’s spit than you can with a whole bottle of alcohol, there’s a damn problem...”

Jake wasn’t listening. He heard the crunch of tires on tall grass and, once the blinding headlights flickered off, he was able to see the faded orange truck attached to them. It had a chipped cream stripe down the side and loose mirror, as it had when he was seventeen.

He inhaled a breath through his teeth.

“Oh,” Meenah said. “That got your attention.”

“What’s he doing here?” Jake asked.

“Dunno. He told me you invited him.”

“He what?”

“I thought you knew he was coming,” she said, sitting up.

“He told me he didn’t want to—” Jake said. “I figured he wouldn’t want to see me for the rest of the week—”

Meenah nodded. “No, no, I think that’s still the case.”

Jake looked to her with a panicked expression. She rolled her eyes.

“Alright, that’s not entirely true. It’s like, I guess he had big long talk with Lalonde’s mom or something a while back. You remember her, right? The quack off the eighty-five?”

“Roxy’s mom?” Jake asked.

“Yeah, her,” Meenah nodded. “Well, ever since he started hanging with her you get him drunk enough he’ll start rambling off about ‘conflict’ and ‘closure’ and ‘what-I’ll-do-when-I-sea-him-again-is,’ that kind of fish-shit.”  

The driver’s side door of the truck clicked open and Dirk stepped from it, a case of Capri Suns in his right hand.

“So... he does want to see me?” Jake asked, eye on the encroaching ex-lover making his way towards them with age-appropriate drinks. The gears in his mind attempted to process. “For closure?”

“Does it matter what he wants? He came, didn’t he?”

“Fuck,” Jake said. “I don’t know that _I_   want to see him right now.”

“Jake,” Meenah said, voice dropping to something surprisingly serious. “You’re fucking mess. My point is he can’t stop talking about you. Scoop up those cards, playa’. You make enough game here and that cold bastard’ll let you take him home.”

She grabbed a fresh beer and stood up, striding her way towards Dirk before Jake could even blink.

“That’s what you think the problem is here?!” Jake yelled after her, but she only spun around to briefly shrug.

Dirk set the Capri Suns down in the middle of the teens, scooping up an unopened six-pack from their reach in return. Meenah took the contraband from him and presented the beer bottle in her hand as an exchanged prize.

“Here I was thinking your gay ass left me for greener weekend party pastures,” she said. Dirk accepted the drink and took a swig.

“I must love the taste of cheap beer and freezing my gay ass off just a little too much,” Dirk retorted. Meenah laughed and initiated some kind of secret handshake, culminating in them bumping opposite shoulders and landing a loud smack of a high five.  

“Good to have you back, Strider,” she said. “And to think I only had to drag English away from France or Mexico or wherever the fuck he’s been to do it.”

“Next time, just send me a damn invite,” Dirk said.

They both snickered. Jake attempted to camouflage with the log beneath him. Was it too late to flee to the forest and live out the rest of his precious days there? Hermitage seemed like a better alternative to the sharp stare Dirk shot his way.

Dirk moved to step in Jake’s direction, but Meenah caught his arm. She leaned in close, whispered some precious secret in his ear, and Dirk scoffed back at her.

“No way,” he said.

“Please,” she whined. “It’s been so long.”

“It’s the middle of December. No fucking way,” he said. He tugged his shoulder away from her grip and stepped towards where Jake was sitting with dwindling willingness.

As he neared, Jake felt his throat constrict. His fingers dug into the down of his vest.

"Dirk!" Jake said with the sort of feint surprise reserved for ex-boyfriends and high school reunions.  
  
"Jake," Dirk said with the kind of forced bluntness reserved for ex-boyfriends and premeditated murder.   
  
"Aw, look at you two sons o' fishes, back at it again," Meenah said, patting Dirk on the shoulder.   
  
Dirk took a sip of his beer.   
  
He looked young in the fading twilight. Like the teenager Jake once knew, just with darker eyes and a stronger jawline.

Jake felt his stomach lurch. It was a strange thing, to indulge in nostalgia for something that rightfully despised you. There was warmth in the mere memory of Dirk's skin. They had spent dozens of weekends on Lake Derse together, shoulders grazing in front of the campfire and hands finding handfuls in the woods.

The temperature in Jake's cheeks was rising. He sunk a little deeper into his puffed vest. Meenah looked back over to him.

“Hey,” she said, “Strider’s gonna ask you to follow him into the woods in a bit. You go with him, alright?”

“I am not,” Dirk spit.

"Come on, Strider," Meenah said. "English here said he'd give you a hand."

“Did I?” asked Jake.

“Yes,” said Meenah.

"It's cold," Dirk answered. His eyes were still focused on Jake. "The lake's high."

Meenah snorted. "So? Has that been an issue before? Take your socks off. Cuff your pants."  
  
"I don't want to."   
  
"Pleeeease," Meenah said. "It's been for-fucking-ever. The kids are starting to forget. I can't have their self-entitled tailfins getting too comfortable on my watch."   
  
Dirk took another sip. Jake watched his thin, pale lips slide around the glass rim. The ex-teenager let out a huff of breath through his nose when he noticed Jake’s focus, lowering the bottle. Jake glanced away shyly.   
  
"Maybe they should," Dirk said.   
  
"Huh," Meenah said.   
  
"Maybe they should forget."   
  
"Dirk," Meenah whined. "You absolute scrub. I want my fucking monster."   
  
Jake stood up, then, hands immediately shoving into his vest pockets. Attention settled back on him and he immediately regretted the decision. He was grateful that his skin his the ruddy heat swirling beneath it.   
  
"Whatever it is, I'll help you," he offered.   
  
Dirk looked unimpressed. But he did turn back to Meenah.   
  
"When do you want to do it?"   
  
"Midnight," Meenah said.   
  
"Let's make it sundown," Dirk said. He chugged the rest of his drink, bringing a hand up to wipe at his mouth when he was finished. "And you've got yourself a damn monster."   


❧

  
Dusk was settling into something murkier by the time Jake set out from the bonfire with Dirk.

 _You’re the cardshark_ , Meenah had told him before he departed. Though he was having a hard time believing it.

The chatter of teenagers grew distant as they trudged a short distance through the surrounding woods, keeping the shoreline in sight. Dirk was two beers down and seemingly determined to maintain the steady, icy chill that had formed between them on their hike.

"So..." Jake asked. He crushed brittle leaves beneath each footstep. "What are we doing again?"  
  
"You remember the Lake Derse Leviathan, right?" Dirk said.   
  
"The campfire story?"   
  
"Yeah, the thing Meenah made up," Dirk said. "Then tried to sell a shit ton of T-shirts of once it started to catch on."   
  
"She certainly knows how to jump on an opportunity, that one," Jake said. The hazy fog of memories washed over his mind. "I remember she'd get us all crowded around the shore some weekends and she'd call out for it! And we'd hush up and wait. And every damn time a fish or something would splash around somewhere out on the water and we'd all go scuttling backwards like a panicked buffalo herd, screaming about Old Gods and tentacles all the way."   
  
Jake laughed to himself as he trailed behind Dirk. The blond's head ducked down as he avoided a low branch. He didn't look back when he opened his mouth again.   
  
"It was me," Dirk said.   
  
Jake stopped. The fallen leaves were up to his ankles.

"Huh?"   
  
"It was me," Dirk responded. "I was the Lake Derse Leviathan."

Jake let this revelation sink in.

He thought of the cold winds that used to ghost up off the waterfront. There was always a large crowd when Meenah announced at school that she planned to call upon the great beast from the depths. But now that he thought about it Dirk had never been present for those late nights huddled around the lakeside.

As his memory sharpened, he realized the splashing response to Meenah’s chanting calls had always been on cue. The noise had never really been splashing, either. More like a loud upheaval of water from something beneath the surface, something large and menacing dragging deep through the water, or so it had settled in his mind as he fled away from the shore besides his fellow classmates.

“Well,” Dirk said, looking over his shoulder. “Come on then.”

Jake was still planted firmly where he had halted in surprise.

“You were…”

“Yeah,” Dirk said. “Sometimes Roxy would help me. Keep your mouth shut about it. Meenah’s still got magnets in the lodge giftshop.”

Jake let out a loud, breathy laugh. “You scared the shit out of me when I was a kid!”

“Mhmm,” Dirk hummed, turning towards their path. Jake rushed to catch up with him.

“I mean, really. We were best friends—you knew I was scared of that blasted thing!—and you never thought to mention that you were…” Jake laughed. “Hell, we were _boyfriends_ and—”

He clamped his mouth shut. It was probably best not to broach the topic while Dirk was trying so hard to show no expression beyond unnerving flatness. Hell, even when they were dating attaching such a term to their relationship was…

Well, it didn’t matter now.

Jake searched for words. “I mean, it’s just that…”

Dirk stopped short, and Jake’s mind spun in desperation to change the subject, but the other man simply gestured out towards the lake.  

“There,” he said, pointing to a scrub tree sticking out of the water. Jake squinted at the thing, catching sight of a rope hooked around its base.

“What is it?” Jake asked. Dirk had already sat himself on the bank. He pulled off his sneakers and started to roll down his left sock.

Jake stood beside him, a little lost.

“Should I…”

“You can help if you want,” Dirk said. “If you want to risk turning your feet into icecubes. Up to you.”

Dirk finished pulling off the other sock and stuffed them both inside his sneakers. He shoved the shoes aside, then, and stood up.

By the time Dirk leaned down to cuff his jeans up to his knees Jake decided he did, in fact, want to help. He rushed to peel his boots off his feet too.

“Right,” Jake said when he was finished. Dirk had already waded a few feet into the water and Jake splashed through the shallows to join him. Ooph. That was cold. Jake tried to shift his feet around in the sudden icebath to keep them warm.

“What’s the plan?” he asked.

Dirk reached the partially submerged tree he had pointed out earlier and steadied himself by leaning a shoulder on the trunk. He squatted down and his fingers found the knot in the rope. They made quick work of untying it.

“There’s a log in the lake,” Dirk said. “It’s huge. One summer Meenah and I dove down and looped this around it.”

He tugged lightly on the newly freed length of rope. It didn’t seem to budge.

“You pull this,” he said, wrapping the waterlogged cord around his hands. “And it’ll startle the water. Keep dragging it, and it looks like something is moving under there. Something big.”

His feet found a steady stance in the lakemud and he pulled—hard—his biceps flexing and shoulderblades flaring until the rope gave in his direction. Out on the lake, the surface stirred.

He stopped, satisfied.

“Wow,” Jake offered, simply, in response. “That’s quite the gig you’ve been running out here.”

“Not recently. But yeah, it’s a good prank,” Dirk said. The moon was scarce through the trees, and Jake could only see the profile of his face in the darkness. “You helping out? Or are you just going to freeze a few toes off for fun?”

Dirk stepped upwards a few steps to regrip the rope. He handed the extra slack to Jake, who sloshed forward to take it.

The rope was coarse but clammy in his hands. It was coated with algae growth.

“Right,” Jake said.

Dirk nodded. He turned his attention towards the water, and a sharp, even whistle left his mouth. He pulled back his lips and stuttered the sound a bit towards the end, mimicking a strange but not completely amiss woodland birdcall.

“Leviathan!” Meenah yelled in a booming voice. Jake couldn’t see her on the distant shore from where he was tucked in the woods with Dirk, but he could imagine her playing the part of cryptid keeper from the pieces of his memory.

Meenah had an impeccable stage presence that echoed across the lake.

“Great Gl'bgolyb from the deep! We come to your shores to honor your spirit! And offer you this very special sacrifice.”

There was a young, feminine shriek and some abounding laughs. Jake perked up at the commotion. Dirk held his ground, listening.

“Never mind, Great Gl'bgolyb,” Meenah called, “Ix-nay on the sacrifice. Some people just can’t be counted on in these troubling times.”

More laughs.

“When do we know to pull?” Jake asked. He attempted to keep his voice down. His ankles were going numb.

“She’ll tell us,” Dirk said.

“We come to you tonight to witness the unspeakable horror of your mere presence!” Meenah yelled again. Wind whistled across the lake waves. “Bigass Leviathan! That’s your cue!”

“That’s our cue,” Dirk said.

“I surmised as much!” Jake replied in a whispered hiss.

They pulled.

The rope creaked beneath the sudden weight and Jake held his breath, watching, waiting, and pulling with all his might. The strain loosened as something began the roll closer to them. Out on the water, ripples began to form on the surface.

“Keep going,” Dirk said.

Jake sucked in a breath between his teeth and pulled again. Dirk echoed his movement. The ripples grew into a great slosh of water.

The distinct sound of teenagers screaming filled their ears.

The choppy, artificial waves slapped up against the bank and across Jake’s naked shins. He ignored the deep shill the water left behind. Instead, he double-downed his efforts and tugged backwards with all his might. In front of him, Dirk’s shoulders hunched with effort.

The tree was a heavy anchor. It chugged along underwater at a snail’s pace. Nevertheless, the slow drag of water was enough to send teenagers yelling and stumbling back from the shore. At least one brave soul flickered on their phone flashlight and attempted to illuminate the waves.

“Perfect,” Dirk said.

Jake grinned. “This is really quite the con, Stri—”

Something snapped beneath the surface, deep in the depths. The rope went slack in Jake’s hands and, as if he had been physically shoved backwards, the momentum behind his pull sent him sprawling.

His feet attempted to catch his balance, one after the other thrusting out blindly behind him. But it was no use—with his portion of the snapped rope still clutched in his hands he fell straight back on his ass, plunging into the shallow, cold brink.

He gasped. The sudden, icey sensation sunk into his clothing within seconds. It spread across the lower half of him and up the forearms he caught himself with. A bone-deep chill that threatened to chatter his teeth.

When he looked up, eyes wide with shock, he saw Dirk had caught himself on the thin tree the rope had been previously tied around. Dirk was breathing hard. When he caught Jake’s eye he immediately charged forward to help him up.

“I—” Adrenaline decided to kick into Jake’s system and he could barely process a thing.

“Shhh,” Dirk was saying, voice barely over a whisper. He reached out an arm for Jake to take.

“What—”

“Shhshhh,” Dirk repeated, “I don’t know if they heard that.”

He was covering his face with his other hand. Jake realized, belatedly, that Dirk had a wide grin seeping across his face that he was attempting to suppress with the soft shushes he sent Jake’s direction.

Jake took the hand offered to him.

“Are you laughing at me?” he asked, a bit put out. Dirk’s hand held firm as Jake used it to lift himself up out of the water. The lake splashed around him as he did so, and water ran down his legs from where it had soaked into his clothing.

“Shhh,” Dirk said yet again.

“There you have it, folks,” Meenah called. “The Great Leviathan, at its finest.”

Dirk did not let go of Jake’s hand when he was righted. Instead, they stood in silence, hands gripped and water lapping at their shins.

There was a smattering of distant applause.

“Congratulations,” Dirk said, voice as low as the light. “You’re a star.”

Jake’s teeth chattered fully now.

“I don’t suppose I get my name in the credits,” he said.

Dirk smiled. He clapped Jake on the shoulder and pulled himself from their mutual grip, wading back to shore.

“C’mon, Hollywood,” he said into the dark woods before him, “I’ve got spare clothes in my car.”

❧

The spare clothes in question were pulled out from the passenger seat of Dirk’s truck. The old, beat-up pickup was tucked thankfully within the confines of the makeshift parking lot, unnoticed by the nearby teens chattering about their supernatural experience.

Dirk was rifling around in a backpack for spare clothes. Jake’s eyes couldn’t help but wander to the other contents within the pockets. A toothbrush, hair gel, contact solution; an overnight bag.

“Were you going somewhere tonight?” Jake asked. He was still shivering, and the breeze that graced them now that they were out of the woods was uncomfortable. He bounced up and down on the balls of his feet to keep warm. “I’m sorry if you were,” he added, quickly.

Dirk paused where he was removing a pair of boxers from the backpack.

“Not tonight,” he replied. “Not anymore.”

“Oh,” Jake said.

Dirk pulled out a balled up pair of socks.

“You can still go,” Jake continued.

He flinched at his own bluntness. Dirk pulled himself up from the truck’s cab and handed his collected items to Jake.

“Go where?” he said.

“Dallas,” Jake answered. “Or wherever.”

Dirk moved to shut the car door and Jake stepped away to provide him the room to do so. When it clicked closed, Dirk turned back to him. His face was easier to see in the unshaded moonlight, the distant highlight of the bonfire.

“Get changed,” Dirk said. He gestured towards the stack of clothes. “Don’t worry about me.”

Dirk tilted his head for modesty. It wasn’t something they would have done if they were younger, but Jake was thankful regardless. He shoved down his waterlogged pants and swiftly put on the boxers and sweats provided to him. They were blissfully dry.

Water had splashed up the back of Jake’s shirt, too. He shrugged off his vest and pulled the soiled fabric over his shoulders. When Dirk turned back around Jake was finishing shrugging down the T-shirt Dirk provided for him over his stomach. The new shirt was a soft, white cotton with some kind of band logo sprawled across it. He was still cold, but he shot Dirk a grateful smile for the change of clothes.

“You got taller,” Dirk noted. When Jake looked down he saw that the sweats came up a bit short on his ankles.

“Heh,” Jake said, head bobbing back up. “I guess so.”

Dirk hummed in approval. He stepped around Jake and popped open the door to the bed of his truck. Jake followed.

“Here,” he said, tapping the edge of the truckbed. “Hop up here.”

Jake did as he was told and lifted himself up. Once he was sat down, he began to roll Dirk’s socks over his almost-frozen feet.

Dirk jumped up on the truckbed beside him and crawled on his knees towards the back. Jake heard a rustle of fabric and looked over his shoulder to see what Dirk was doing. A great, warm, checkered blanket was tossed at him. He made no attempt to catch it, instead letting the red plaid hit him square in the face. Dirk snickered.

Jake reached around himself to pull the fabric closer to his body until he had a comfortable cocoon. Then, he sneezed.

Dirk laughed fully, now.

“Are you part-timing at a ranch?” Jake asked. He wiped at his nose. “These blankets smell like horses.”

“That’s because they’re horse blankets,” Dirk replied. He had acquired his own blanket, and was nestled in the corner of the truckbed. His head was leaned against the back of the cab. His eyes were closed. 

“You’re working with horses?”

“I own a horse,” Dirk said, not bothering to look up.

“You own a horse?” Jake scooted himself back. He stopped when he was beside Dirk and hunkered himself into his blanket. It was shockingly warm. “Since when?”

“Since two years ago,” Dirk replied.

“Do you—Where do you keep it?”

“You remember Rose Lalonde? Roxy’s mom?”

“Yes?”

“She lets me have a stall in her stable.”

Jake nodded, though he doubted Dirk was paying close enough attention to see.

“That’s good,” he said. “I’m happy for you, Strider.”

Dirk snorted. “It’s just a horse, English. I didn’t get hitched.”

“I know that! It’s just…”

“You’re worried about me,” Dirk finished.

“Maybe,” Jake replied.

“Don’t be,” Dirk said. “I’m fine.”

Jake stayed silent.

Dirk looked over at him: “Are you?”

Bright stars circled above them. Jake was happy to lull his head up to stare at them.

“Jake,” Dirk called. “Are you okay?”

Jake shrugged himself deeper into his cocoon. His mind was fogged and his legs were cold. 

“If I asked you to kiss me,” he said, “would you do it?”

Dirk hesitated. 

“Probably not,” Dirk replied, after a few seconds.

Jake sunk even further into his blanket nest.

“Are you trying to hook up with me?” Dirk asked.

“Do you want that?”

“I asked first.”

“I,” Jake searched for words. “Yes? No. No, I—I miss you.” Something croaked in his throat. “I have missed you.”

Dirk let out a long, slow breath.

“That’s probably not a great idea,” he said. “Is that why you asked me out here?”

“No, at least—No, absolutely not. I just…” He attempted to collect himself. “I wanted to be around you.”

Dirk’s eyes were on him. He could feel them dragging across his skin.

“I missed you,” Jake said again. The stars took up the entirety of his view. It was easy to ignore everything else.

Dirk stayed silent.

“I used to be happy here, you know,” Jake murmured.

“At the lake?”

“The lake, the town, the entire forsaken county,” Jake continued. “I used to love it here.”

“But you left,” Dirk said.

“ _I know_ ,” Jake replied.

“So why are you here, Jake?”

Jake paused. His eyes unfocused. “The state wants to build a highway. They’re offering a good deal for my grandma’s land.”

“Why are you  _here_ , Jake.”

So many stars. Is it possible to call upon aliens for a spontaneous abduction?

“Something’s missing in me,” Jake said, slow, almost drunken. “Something horribly, terribly lonely has been crawling up my stomach lately and I don’t know how to stop it.”

The scent on the blankets caught in his sinuses again and he coughed, loud.

“I’m sorry,” Dirk said.

“I’ve been all across the world, nothing to show for it.”

“More than I’ve done,” Dirk said.

“Nothing’s helped.”

“You'll find an answer,” Dirk said.

Jake finally pulled his eyes from the sky. He shook his head. “I thought coming back to Skaia might trigger _something_.”

“But you hate Skaia.”

“It’s...” Jake scrunched his eyes shut. “More complicated than that.”

“So I’m familiar misery, then?”

Jake coughed out an abrupt laugh.

“No,” he said, almost too quickly. “God no. When I laid eyes on you... Dirk Strider, you are the closest thing I’ve felt to home in a very long time.”


End file.
